


Trying To Fight The Seasons, Trying To Find Some Meaning

by PrefectMoony



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, First War with Voldemort, M/M, Remus Lupin Never Went to Hogwarts, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:00:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29539278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrefectMoony/pseuds/PrefectMoony
Summary: Sirius feels his cheeks redden. “I don’t wanna steal this car for fuck’s sake.”“Oh,” the other boy blinks, owlish and confused. “If you’re hotboxing you should at least share, mate.”“Hot what?” Sirius asks, feeling like he’s just gone off the bend, but not sure what the fuck to say to get them back to the conversation they should be having— Namely, why the fuck this boy is just lounging in Alphard’s car.“Hmm, I did think you were too posh looking for that.”“Oi! I am not posh!” Sirius shouts, somehow feeling more indignant about this than anything else that’s going on.—OR—In which Remus never went to Hogwarts, and Sirius is falling in love with the seemingly Muggle boy who is sneaking into his car every couple weeks in the middle of a war.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 21
Kudos: 155





	Trying To Fight The Seasons, Trying To Find Some Meaning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WanderingBandurria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingBandurria/gifts).



> This was based off the prompt [you’ve been breaking into my car to sleep at night and I’ve let it slide because it’s been cold out but I have a date and I need you to find somewhere else](https://prefectmoony.tumblr.com/post/619842747221884928)
> 
> Thank you so SO much my love [ wanderingbandurria ](https://wanderingbandurria.tumblr.com) I promise that I tried my best to stick to this prompt as best as possible!!!! It just really got away from me lksajglkasdjaioweghdslkhg I really REALLY hope you like this!!!
> 
> Title comes from Changes by Hayd, please clown me for my long ass titles

Sirius truly isn’t surprised that the first time Lily Evans steps into his newly inherited flat on the first day of Christmas hols of their seventh year, she only wrinkles her nose in that particularly withering way of hers.

“You know, you look like an especially ruffled frog when your face gets all sour like that.” He informs her magnanimously, and is still completely unaffected when she throws a rather rude gesture his way as her only response.

“”you’ve moved in only this morning and this place is an utter sty, Black.”

“Oi, don’t blame me for that! It was your good for nothing boyfriend who decided to have a row with the groceries I bought like a well and proper adult.”

“Only after you threw that bludger at me you great beast,” James sniffs as he drops a particularly heavy box besides the sofa, collapsing onto it almost immediately.

“Oh don’t be such a girl’s blouse and admit that your chaser reflexes will never match up to the brute strength of a beater.”

“You played dirty.”

“Never heard any complaints in that department before, must admit.”

Lily lets out a long suffering sigh, effectively ending the conversation there as she pulls out her wand and enchants the plates in the sink to begin washing with one swish, and completely spelling away the spoiled food with another. “Please at least tell me you cast an immobulus on it before you began acting like idiots?”

“Oi Evans, if Jem didn’t claim you by third year I swear I’d be on one knee,” Sirius laughs, abrupt and amused. “That probably would’ve prevented all that broken glass.”

“Nitwits, you’re both utter nitwits,” Lily bemoans, sinking into James’s lap and rolling her eyes at Sirius so forcefully that he’s almost afraid she’s about to strain something.

“You’re one of us now Lily Flower,” James tells her gleefully, kissing the knuckles of her left hand with reverence, and a year ago Sirius suspects that would’ve earned him a swift kick to the bollocks, but now, it only makes her features soften, and her eyes twinkle, endeared, before she kisses his cheek. And sometimes— though he’d never admit it— Sirius can’t believe that his brother actually got the girl, that he proved to be grown up enough and mature enough to deserve her after being elected prefect. Can’t believe that last spring Lily actually decided to give him the time of day— an actual chance to prove himself. And well now, They’re Lily and James, written in the stars and destined for a storybook sort of happily ever after, with the domesticity and the wedding and all the sprogs galore.

Sirius is so, so happy for them, but he can’t help but be a bit jilted, both on behalf of James spending increasingly less time with Sirius plotting out pranks and imagining their future as rogue curse breakers saving folks all over the world and shagging their way through entire cities. But also, jilted that James found this happiness— this assurance with Lily— before they’ve even graduated, before Sirius has ever even dated a bird he can imagine spending longer than a couple, consecutive weeks with. 

And he doesn’t know why that bothers him so incessantly, why he even cares. He’s never been one for the idea of settling down, was brought up in a household as cold as the Atlantic and completely void of the easy, enveloping sort of love like what he felt after moving in with the potters the summer before their sixth year. He wouldn’t know what to do if he ever began looking as sappy as James did whenever Lily was in a five meter radius. So that’s it, he doesn’t care and he won’t care.

“Well where’s the final wheel in your deformed little tricycle,” Lily asks as she finally stands up and begins opening the boxes delivered to them from the shops Sirius had ordered from— easily falling back to being wealthier than the queen once his Uncle Alphard had past and left Sirius his endless volt of gold and his rather large flat and even his Muggle automobile that Sirius has left parked on it’s reserved spot right outside the building. (Though Lily’s absolutely forbid any of them from using it until they’ve received their Muggle licenses).

“Our what?” James asks, joining Sirius in eyeing her like she’s mad.

Lily rolls her eyes yet again, the third time within the hour— With this rate the poor bird is going to have to begin wearing specs just like her boyfriend. “Peter boys, I meant Peter.”

“Oh Jem that must hurt, she’s gagging for Petey instead.” 

James promptly grabs the nearest heavy object— which happens to be a very peculiarly shaped vase— and throws it at a cackling Sirius’s head, who in turn ducks just in time for it to hit the wall nearest the door right when Peter walks in with his bags of takeaway. 

“Bloody hell!”

“Here’s the heartthrob!” Sirius crows, clapping him on the shoulder. “Hope you brought extra Chana Masala.”

“Erm— Yeah, I did.”

“Brilliant. ’S my favorite.”

“You completely butcher the name you white fucker.”

“Don’t mind Jamsie, he’s just testy because I speak truths.”

Peter nods helplessly, still looks like a fish out of water, which honestly isn’t an unusual occurrence. 

“I hate all of you rather a lot,” Lily tells them while setting down a stack of plates from one of the yet unpacked boxes, but Sirius doesn’t miss how her gaze glances over the edition of The Prophet that Sirius and James had read that morning and what was the catalyst of them wanting to blow off some steam— both of them feeling shell shocked at the blazing, bold letters reporting on three Muggles found slaughtered at their home in Basingstoke.

Swiftly, Sirius snatches for the article, and casts an Incendio to scorch away the reminders of just how screwed up the world is now. And when he flickers his gaze back up at a tired looking Lily, she gives him a thin smile in thanks.

It’s not wrong for them to want to avoid being swallowed up by these horrors for all their days, it’s only human.

.-

By the time the others leave, Sirius’s apartment looks actually inhabitable, which is a feat all its own. To celebrate, he grabs a bottle of Muggle wine that Lily had brought from a shop called Tesco— or what have you, and pops it open before swigging down a good gulp. 

He’s meant to leave to James’s house tomorrow to spend the rest of the holiday with the Potters in Cordova, and he’s so thankful for the family he chose with blood, sweat and tears over the one he was stuck to by birth. But it’s also a thrill that he’s here now, in a place he can call his own, feels that he’s finally escaped the looming thumb of his mother’s furious gaze and his father’s stoic silence, and Regulus’s exasperated looks. Like if Sirius could only not care so much about actually having the right sort of convictions there family wouldn’t always be at each other’s necks, arguing about something or the other. 

“Too Alphard,” he says to himself, tipping up the bottle and taking another drink as he stumbles to the wide partition. He looks down at the bustling streets and the twinkling lights of London, and at the shuffling bodies mixing with the cascading snowflakes and he thinks that it feels like a new beginning, that the winter bells are tolling in a revived opportunity for Sirius and his chosen path. But that also sounds like a load of shite that’d be written in one of Mrs Pettigrew’s romance novels, so he pretends he never thought it.

He doesn’t know how long it is until he finally looks down at Alphard’s sleek, black automobile— a Porsche he thinks. But when he does, he spots a spec of something, like hair the color of honey— and a single hand tracing onto the glass— like a fucking inferi.

Sirius is so confused, but also far too pissed to give a fuck. So he cheers once more to his late uncle, finishes the cheap merlot and blacks out right there on the windowsill.

When he wakes up the next morning, he’s on the ground and his head is aching. But when he glances down at the Porsche, the early morning sun proves that there was never anyone there in the first place.

Sirius is just mad like the lot of the Blacks is all.

.-

The next time he meanders to his flat, it’s months later in the midst of spring hols. Lily agreed to spend the week with James and his parents with an excited glee that Sirius has never seen painted all over the ordinarily stoic prefect. So like the gentleman he is, Sirius told Euphemia and Monty that he needed to visit his cousin Andromeda to finalize some stipulations of the will so it would just be easier if he stayed in London. Though they did make him promise to at least come back to Devon the weekend before they’re expected back at Hogwarts so they can fatten him up and check he hasn’t done any undue harm on himself while in the city.

The first time he meets the bloke it’s a Wednesday afternoon.

Sirius had spent the day plaiting little Dora’s bubblegum pink hair and letting her put glitter in his own as they drink from her tea set and chat about the lively going ons of her friends down the street. So all together, he’s not looking his ordinarily suave self, which is a shame because he reckons that the bloke probably always looks like some sort of fallen angel— golden and glimmering and disheveled in that effortless way that would make James green with envy.

But in all fairness to Sirius, he wasn’t expecting to find a fucking bloke in Alphard’s car in the first place when he decided to nip down and actually get a peek inside.

He doesn’t even notice him right away. Just opens the driver’s side door, and gazes around to get a feel of this Muggle technology, before turning his head to the back and starting when he finds a pair of disarmingly lovely eyes— the color of warm tea and specked with others Sirius can’t even discern at the moment— gazing over at him curiously, head cocked and pale pink lips pinched.

“It’s impossible to wire it, I’ve tried.”

Sirius refuses to admit that he jumped like a sodding ponce. “What the holy fuck.”

The other boy— and that’s what he is once Sirius gets a good look at him, a boy. No older than Sirius himself for sure, with a open sort of face that’s all cheekbones and large eyes fringed by thick brows and even thicker lashes, with a pile of tawny curls that sweep to one side of his head. An all together very pleasant, very beautiful image. “You can’t steel it.”

Sirius feels his cheeks redden. “I don’t wanna steal it for fuck’s sake.”

“Oh,” the other boy blinks, owlish and confused. “If you’re hotboxing you should at least share, mate.”

“Hot what?” Sirius asks, feeling like he’s just gone off the bend, but not sure what the fuck to say to get them back to the conversation they should be having— Namely, why the fuck this boy is just lounging in Alphard’s car.

“Hmm, I did think you were too posh looking for that.”

“Oi! I am not posh!” Sirius shouts, somehow feeling more indignant about this than anything else that’s going on. 

“Mmm,” he nods indifferently, lying back and crossing his long legs and arms expectantly. The shorts he’s wearing are tattered and the T-shirt he has on says Coca Cola in white lettering and is a fetching Gryffindor red that makes him look especially golden. “So what are you doing here?”

“This’s my car!” Sirius huffs, pulls out the keys and twirls them on his finger for good measure. 

“Oh.” Is all he says in retort.

By the time the silence between them gets too heavy, Sirius harrumphs and faces him fully, just so he can get the full brunt of his glower. “So?”

“So?”

Merlin’s saggy balls is this bloke infuriating. “What. Are you. Doing in my. Bloody Uncle’s. Bloody car.” He asks with clipped words and barely restrained irritation.

The pretty boy sneers at him which is so not on, Sirius isn’t the one breaking into strangers vehicles. “No need to get shirty posh boy. I didn’t even know anyone used this thing, ’s been in the lot empty for years.”

“Well I do!”

“Right, well I see that now,” he retorts in that same, placid tone he’s been using this entire damn conversation. “Should’ve known that the bloke who owned a car as old as this one was such a plonker.”

“I’m not the one sneaking into other people’s cars, mate!” Sirius shouts back, briefly wonders if all Muggles are this infuriating.

“I’ve never seen you in here, how do I know those keys are even meant for it?”

Sirius is about to prove it to him until he remembers that he doesn’t even know where or how to use the damn keys. And God it suddenly makes sense why Lily Evans is the way she is if she grew up around Muggles— Contrary as hell, the lot of them.

“Fine you prick! Just stay sitting here like a fucking mad-man.”

He climbs out the seat and slams the door shut, absolutely fuming.

Sirius definitely does not feel his insides tighten at the way the boy smirks up at him through the glass and tips his head with a loftiness he certainly did not earn.

Fucking Muggles!

.-

The next time Sirius sees him, it’s the tail end of June, and he’s just come back from helping James move his things into the new flat that he’s sharing with Lily— one that’s a bit smaller and more cramped than his own, but still feels full in ways that Sirius can’t describe if he was threatened with an unforgivable.

It feels like an expansion of the Potter estate, like how a home should emulate warmth and safety and a welcoming sort of air. Not like how Sirius’s can sometimes choke him with its stilted expectations and cavernous space and cutting loneliness. 

Fuck he’s really off his rocker these days isn’t he?

Sirius decides to stroll to Whitechapel, picks up his favorite cheese and vegetable pasties before lighting up and heading back home. Though his thoughts of a stiff drink and calling up Marlene to go to the clubs and find themselves a pair of birds to shag for the night, are suddenly fractured when he passes the Porsche he’s decided to completely fuck off with in favor of a slick and ready motorbike, and he sees that boy— the infuriating, angelic looking one— for the first time this summer.

Reasoning that a good shouting match would be just what he needs to get him out this funk, Sirius flicks the final burning embers onto the ground and scuffs it with the heal of his boot before swaggering inside in the driver’s door like before, focussing his gaze of irritation to where the other boy is lounging casually on the back seat.

He’s got on a pair of cutoffs and the same T-shirt that rides up to show off a lightly toned, flat stomach with a trail of blonde hair down the center.

Sirius inwardly curses himself for even looking, because what the fuck. Since when does he notice the stomach’s of other boys, or how they’re smattered in lovely, brown freckles or how he looks like he’s meant to be on some sort of obscene advert with the way he’s lying back with a spliff between his lips and his head cradled on a folded arm. The smile curling the ends of his mouth is a bit crooked and entirely mesmerizing.

“Posh Boy,” he greets with a dopey sort of affability, obviously in a better mood with the weed.

“Dodgy Boy,” Sirius says back in a voice that’s not nearly as scathing as he first intended.

“You look Good with the longer hair, though I hope that wasn’t from my slight about you being a wannabe punk,” he says, golden brow hiked, and head cocked ever so slightly to show off the length of his swan like neck, exposing a scar that runs from the bottom of his jaw through his protruding collar bone.

Sirius suddenly feels a bit choked, but pushes it down. “I’d say the same, but I don’t make it a habit conversing with criminals,” Sirius tells him, as if he didn’t receive the most detentions in the history of Hogwarts, and as if the other boy really didn’t look bloody good. His tawny hair has gone more shaggy than messy and he’s got a stud in one ear, and another fading scar beneath the other. And yeah, it’s a sight. Which is so fucked considering that Sirius didn’t even realize he can enjoy the sight of boys like this.

“I don’t think you mind all that much Posh Boy,” he says with a snort, turns back around and takes another deep inhale. “Which is good mind you, I just got in a scuffle with my old man, and I needed somewhere to sleep for the night. Nasty business you know, wouldn’t want to get back there before the alcohol’s left his system.”

Sirius frowns, actually worried for him now. “Your dad’s a drunk?”

The laugh the other boy lets out right then is ragged and a bit frayed at the edges, something humorless and hurt in ways Sirius thinks he’d never understand. “Haven’t seen my Dad since I was seven and he fucked off to no where, mate.”

“Oh— Then your—“

“Be a darling and hand me one of those pasties, yeah?” He says, interrupting Sirius’s train of thought.

“Pass me the spliff and maybe I’ll think about it,” Sirius counters and this time when the golden boy laughs, it’s not so shattered.

.-

The following months living in London isn’t what Sirius expected for himself, isn’t what any of them suspected he supposes.

Sirius and James are in the Auror academy by day and making patrols for the Order by night. Lily’s practical exams for the Healers university are on live bodies over dummies and are matters of life and death. Even Peter is trying his hardest to recruit from within the Ministry for Dumbledore and tagging along with the other three as they stave off any potential Death Eater hideouts.

This war is something dark and sinister and Sirius is terrified every fucking day. Terrified for his friends, whether they’ll get hurt. Terrified for the muggles even, for the helpless souls that these evil fuckers are targeting so passionately. And he’s also terrified for himself, not whether he gets hurt or not, but whether the center finally breaks from under him and one of these nights he’s going to have to find his own sodding brother behind one of those cowardly masks.

It’s all shite! Pure and utter garbage.

Sirius thinks he would’ve gone absolutely barmy by now if it weren’t for that fucking boy— Remus, which he found out casually with a careless reply by him on one of their all too frequent meet ups, night time sessions where Remus lies flat and Sirius sits up rigidly and pretends like he doesn’t want to snake himself between Remus’s legs and snog him senseless. 

And it’s a ridiculous pattern that they’ve fallen into, but one that they don’t break. 

Remus always ends up sleeping in Alphard’s Porsche at least once every fortnight or so, and if Sirius spots him, he comes down with a lighter and food and they smoke and eat and bitch about life.

It’s sometimes difficult on Sirius’s end— trying to filter himself in front of a Muggle, but usually Remus is too blazed to even notice, just laughs at how peculiar the wealthy are and then does something downright despicable like stretching so that even more of his stomach shows, or leering up at Sirius like he knows Sirius can’t stop staring. Once he even moaned around a crape that Sirius had bought ostensively for his breakfast the next morning, but knowing full and well that it was about time for Remus to visit and he wanted to see the way he licks the chocolate off his fingers, the way he sometimes does with sugar or oil. His long, tapered fingers that have an almost inhuman elegance to them.

But other times is difficult because Remus is haggard and exhausted looking, with fresh marks on his arms or legs or even once against the hollow of his cheek. And they usually disappear by the next time they see each other but it’s still an awful sight, makes Sirius’s insides squirm unpleasantly and his stomach tumble into knots. But anytime he asks Remus about them, if it’s that elusive old man who’s given them to him, he just glares up at him crossly and tells him to bugger off before turning around and shutting his eyes.

Sirius hates it but knows he doesn’t really have a leg to stand on considering all the secrets he’s keeping from him right back. Besides, Remus seems like the wily, scrappy sort, someone who can take care of himself; and if there’s a quiet voice nagging at the back of his head— wishing that he could be the one to help protect him— Sirius just wards it off with a Guinness and counts down the days till he sees Remus again.

.-

It’s late September now, and the autumnal chill is finally beginning to creep into the London air. Sirius finds himself plastered to the window. Like he’s some risible excuse of a wartime wife waiting for her beloved to come back to her, but instead they’re both men and Remus isn’t anything worth anything to him, and they don’t owe it to one another to be concerned. 

Though that doesn’t stop the fear ridden tendrils from snaking around his heart, and squeezing particularly rough when he appartes into his kitchen after a rough night and can make out the shadow of Remus in Alphard’s car.

Hurriedly, Sirius jumps into the shower and washes the mud and dirty Thames water from his person and then collects the blanket he’s been meaning to toss into the backseat of the car for an age now. Though he isn’t prepared for when he clammers inside and the first thing he sees is Remus, beautiful and peculiar and infuriating Remus, sitting there with a cut across his temple and through his brow, topped off by a purpling bruise blooming across the supple skin of his ever so lovely collar bone.

“What the fuck happened to you.” Sirius demands, doesn’t give a shit that they’re still practically strangers.

“You’re tetchy today,” Remus intones.

“You look like someone took a bat to your bloody face!” Sirius shouts back, but Remus only shrugs, wordlessly grabbing the blanket and wraps it around his slight form before blowing warm air into his palms. “What the fuck happened!” Sirius demands once more, feeling like he might implode with all the pent up anger.

“Was a rough night is all,” Remus tells him.

“Is that right?” Sirius does something he never has before, he climbs into the back seat along side Remus.

It’s a bit of a tight squeeze, all limbs and crooked angles but Sirius doesn’t care. he crowds Remus against the window and peers down with a searing sort of intensity. “Did your fucking old man do that to you, if that’s what we’re still calling him.”

Sirius idly thinks that this is the first time he’s ever seen something like anger etched into Remus’s beauteous features— a face that is usually so impassive and blasé about everything.  
Sirius doesn’t know if he exactly likes it. 

“And what the fuck is that suppose to mean.”

“I think you know what I mean,” Sirius retorts, suddenly much less steadfast in his accusations, because really that’s a rotten thing to accuse someone as, even if the dots do connect. Remus being a pretty young thing, someone with no home to call his own and someone who always seems to be buzzed on something, never quite sober. Whether its something as innocuous as weed to more suspect drugs that he’s seen cut at the clubs and warded off from by an insistent Marlene.

“Want you to say it,” Remus says with such a frighteningly flat tone that it sorta scares Sirius shitless, but he doesn’t care, has always been a Gryffindor through and through. Brash and bombastic and thoughtlessly cruel on occasion.

“The bloke you’re whoring yourself out for.”

Remus punches him straight in the stomach and Sirius doesn’t even feel all that affronted, knows that’s what he would’ve done too. “Go fuck yourself.”

Remus grabs for the door to leave but Sirius wraps a desperate hand against his slender wrist, silently imploring him to stay with his pleading gaze. “I’m sorry, all right. I’m sorry.”

Remus’s mouth is a straight line that looks like it could cut and there’s a tension threaded through his shoulders that Sirius only now notices. “You’re a fucking prick.” 

“I’m concerned is all.”

“The blokes I decide to fuck is none of your business Sirius Black,” he fumes with a tone like a lashing whip, quick and cutting and red hot with anger. 

“I— I never said that it was.” Sirius tries to defend, hates how he literally hears the quiver in his own words. “It’s just—“

“They don’t do this to me— Not most of it anyways.”

Sirius stays quiet, even if it’s a baldfaced lie. What’s he suppose to ascertain, that Remus is doing this to himself? That seems nearly impossible. 

“Whatever you say.”

Remus rolls back his entire head, as if eyes alone wouldn’t be enough to translate his irritation. It’s not the first time that Sirius thought he and Lily would get on like a house on fire. “You don’t believe me.”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“Right, well then what about you just keep your posh little nose out of my business then, is that fair?”

Sirius nods, once and slow. “I suppose if that means you won’t run out on me like you were about to, I can deal with that.”

“You are really the strangest bloke I have ever met Sirius, do you know that?”

“Was about to say the same thing about you if I’m being honest,” Sirius says, near sheepish. But then Remus sighs— long suffering— and then he does something absolutely insane. He fucking pounces forwards and for the next half hour all Sirius knows— all he can focus on— is lips and tongue and how soft Remus’s skin feels beneath the pads of his fingers. How he tastes like a cocktail of smoke and burnt sugar and a little like questions with no answers.

Everything goes a wonderful sort of delirious when Remus drags Sirius over him and they’re just lying there— with Remus’s legs squeezing his sides and his nails scratching against his back, and their constrained erections bucking up against one another like Sirius is fifteen again and having it off with a particularly studious Ravenclaw who only let him feel her up beneath the jumper and over the bra while he jackhammered against her thigh. But that couldn’t compare to here and now, Sirius is afraid that nothing could. No memory or no person could compare to the feeling of having Remus pressed up against him in all the most maddening of ways. Nothing could compare to his hot breaths skirting against Sirius’s lips or the taste of his warm skin beneath Sirius’s nipping mouth or the sensation of them writhing together in a rhythm he thinks was strung by the heavens above.

But then it ends to soon, and Sirius is shuttering past the edge, dazed by the sound of Remus’s whimpers while he thrusts a few more time to match him, and Sirius kisses his face and neck all over until he’s lost in the same ways.

“That.” Sirius pants, simply can’t catch his breath with Remus still pliant beneath him. “That. Was. Bloody miraculous.”

“Mmm, I’m sticky though.” Remus says, stretching out like a cat, which makes Sirius scramble up bashfully. 

“I’ve got a decent shower upstairs.” He tries to offer without sounding giddy at the thought.

Remus considers him for a moment too long before agreeing and Sirius thinks this feels like both a beginning and an ending, and whether that’s a good thing or not, he couldn’t tell.

.-

It was a near full on brawl to get Remus to spend the night in Sirius’s flat over the fucking Porsche, but when he wakes up the next morning, he feels so thankful that he didn’t give up. 

The feeling of getting to wake to the buttery glow of daybreak with Remus lying besides him— both of them curled up like a pair of corresponding parentheses— is definitely something like a blessing; made all the more evident when the sunlight spills through the window. It unspools golden in Remus’s hair and dances atop his cheekbones with a gentle sort of caress, and when he flutters his eyes open, the green specs flare to life in their dark depths in a way that strangles Sirius’s lungs with wanting. 

Merlin, is this a sight worthy of a patronus. 

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

“I’ve got a shift at work.”

“Oh,” Sirius blinks, taken aback. He didn’t know he had a real job, tells him as much.

“Well yeah, course I do. Just because I didn’t go to some fancy, wizarding boarding school like some folks, doesn’t mean I haven’t got any worth.” Remus slides out of bed, and Sirius is nearly far too distracted by the image of the dimples on the small of his back, and the sight of his pert arse only covered by a pair of cotton boxers— but no. Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

“Wha— What do you mean?” He sputters, frantically sprinting up to where Remus is taking a leak in the loo and doesn’t even care if this is considered rude in some circles. “My school— It was normal. It was just— Erm— Posh. Like you said that first time, hah. I’m just a posh idiot.”

Remus rolls his beautiful eyes and Sirius feels an odd combination of dread and arousal.

“No need to shit yourself, mate. No statutes of secrecy were broken. Just recognized your wand is all.” He hip checks Sirius so he can wash his hands, meeting his gobsmacked gaze through the mirror. “Next time you invite a Muggle over for a quick fuck, you should really hide it, or at least tell them you’re a professor and it’s your teaching baton or some rut. Otherwise it would look mighty suspicious.”

Sirius’s throat feels suddenly clogged and he is so fucking lost that it feels like he’s just jumped into that damn rabbit hole from that Muggle book that Lily always talks about. “You know about wizards?”

Remus scoffs darkly, head tilted with an imperious air. “Try it again, yeah?”

And somehow this is even more confusing. Sirius can literally feel his brows hiking up and mouth dropping open in astonishment. “You— You’re a wizard?”

Remus smiles in an imitation of bashful, but it’s belied by the mischief glittering in his eyes. “Guilty as charged, love.”

“But— You never went to Hogwarts.”

“Your observational skills are top notch I must say,” he tells Sirius while redressing in the clothes that Sirius practically tore off of him last night amidst a blinding frenzy. 

“I’m really bloody confused,” Sirius finally admits, still looking at him with a slack jaw and wide eyes. 

In answer, Remus laughs like the sun, pulling out what must be his Merlin forsaken wand from his windbreaker, and tapping his nose with his index finger like the first time they ever really talked. “Hogwarts isn’t the end all be all, Sirius black.” And with a graceful flick of the wrist, Remus is gone with only the pop of apperation left in his wake.

“Sweet Morgana, I’m fucked.”

.-

Remus doesn’t come back once in the next three months. He doesn’t go to the Porsche, or stick his head through the floo. Doesn’t even send a sodding owl for fuck’s sake.

Which is fine. Whatever. It doesn’t fucking matter.

Sirius certainly doesn’t give a flying flobberworm’s left tit.

Well that’s if you don’t count how increasingly peeved off and bereft and just downright irritated by everything he’s become. So much so that on one of their nightly patrols with James he only narrowly dodges a nasty jinx that ends up skewering open his leg and leaving him in St Mungo’s with an irate Lily to answer to and a fear ridden James and a worried, glum Peter. 

“Listen, I’m sorry.” Sirius says to a silently furious James who’s sat at his bedside while they wait for a mediwitch to get his discharge papers lined up.

James’s pout somehow turns even moodier and he just nods his head stiffly as he focusses on a point over Sirius’s shoulder.

“Jem, ’s not like I meant for the wanker to nick me.” Sirius grumbles, mouth twisted up in his own irritation.

“You almost fucking died!” James shouts, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence between them. “You almost died and what the fuck am I suppose to do if you did?” 

Sirius bows his head, feels the squirming shame of his words and the guilt along with it. “Listen I’m sorry, I’ll be more focussed next time.”

“You haven’t been focussed for bloody months,” James all but spits, standing up fully and looming above him with a glower.

“It was a stupid mistake,” Sirius mutters, petulant and apologetic all at once.

James’s features don’t relax but he doesn’t continue to yell either. “I wish you would tell me what’s crawled up your arse lately.”

And for a fleeting second Sirius is about to. Wants it like nothing else to tell James about the strange boy who slinked in his car almost a year ago now, and right into his heart along with it. About Remus’s mercurial moods and his glittering eyes when Sirius makes him laugh. About his gorgeous grin that’s always this edge of devious and how he has turned everything on its head. How he kissed Sirius with a ferocity he’s never known, only to fuck off right afterwards. He wants to tell James he’s been consumed by worry for Remus and anger at him too.

But James— who’s already planning to buy a ring for Lily and to propose before the year is out— Just wouldn’t understand. He’d probably tell him that he should move on and that this torch he’s carrying is more than a bit pathetic. And he just can’t.

Instead Sirius elbows his side and leers at him in a way that resembles playful. “Well I didn’t wanna tell you, but Evans and I have been buggering non stop on the sly.”

Graciously, James takes the olive branch and pretends to be peeved while he cuffs him round the head. “Like she’d ever go for someone so bloody posh.”

Sirius scowls crossly now, lips pursed. “I swear to Merlin the next person who calls me posh will get a swift left hook for their troubles.”

“Truth hurts I suppose,” James guffaws and it finally feels a bit more like normal.

.-

The next night, an Order meeting is scheduled in Sirius’s flat to gather what they know and what their next steps entail.

So of course, it’s while Sirius is listening to James and Lily drone on about the leak in their flat as they set out the drinks that he peers out the partition and sees it— sees him.

His heart twists up something fierce, and his pulse spikes up about a hundred notches and he feels like he might vomit with the shock.

“Sirius? Earth to Sirius!” 

He jolts back to find a very shrewd looking Lily who’s squinting up at him, irritated as all get out, so he reckons she’s been calling his name for a while now. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Ah, erm,” he sputters, words going gargled as they come out. “I just need to, erm— I gotta toss out the trash.”

“Toss out the trash…” She repeats, unimpressed. 

“Yeah, yeah I’ve needed to for weeks now and it’d be embarrassing to have this place stinking up when the others get here.” Sirius tells her, grabbing on the lie like a lifeline.

“Well are you a wizard or not man,” James scoffs. “Spell it away.”

“No! No I can’t, we don’t wanna risk any magical marks tonight. Not with the Order here and all. I’ll just nip downstairs and toss it out in the rubbish bin real quick.”

James and Lily level a meaningful glance over his shoulder, but Sirius doesn’t really care to figure it out. He just snatches the half empty bag from the kitchen, and the leftover from the curry they had ordered that night and races downstairs, ignoring Lily’s condemnation that there’s more than half left and that he could just heat it up for tomorrow.

All that’s flashing through Sirius’s mind is Remus’s smile and Remus’s eyes and the sensation of Remus’s lips pressed up against his own.

.-

He looks around quickly, makes sure that James and Lily aren’t spying on him from upstairs, and he knocks on the window of the Porsche before getting into the backseat where Remus usually lies, feeling a sick sort of pleasure when he finally gets to rest his eyes on him after so long. On his freshly cut curls and his small smile of hello, and even the purple circles smudged beneath his tired eyes.

“‘lo Sirius,” he greets quietly, and he’s a bit more threadbare than before. His voice with more of a rasp, and a new scar peeking out from under his sleeve, and somehow— impossibly— skinnier than before. And still, he’s the most beautiful sight Sirius has ever been deigned to devour with unabashed eagerness.

Very gingerly, e sets the take away on the passenger seat, and then very gently, very deliberately pounces on him. Kisses Remus like he can finally breathe, which isn’t really far off. 

And it’s like a tension loosens from inside him when he feels Remus’s hands resting on his shoulders, and a pleased mew slipping out his lips when Sirius nuzzles across his neck and breathes in that particular scent of sunlight and clean grass and laundry soap that always clings to him. 

“I hate you.”

“You’re really such a brat,” Remus snorts, climbing onto his lap and kissing him once more. And Sirius is so lost within him— But he manages to pull himself away before the point of no return, breathing heavily as he squeezes his eyes shut. 

“What’s the problem?” Remus asks, and Sirius is so pleased to hear him so undone. 

“I’ve got a thing.”

That works to break the taught energy between them, causing Remus to pull back with an amused sort of half grin and pinning him with a one eyed squint. “Like what? A date?”

Sirius smirks, cants up and relishes how Remus’s features twist with pleasure at the sensation. “Yeah, like a date. Does that bother you?”

“Well you’re leaving me high and dry here,” Remus retorts, dipping down from his perch to kiss the column of Sirius’s neck and slips his hands beneath his henley. And God, if anyone ever fucking doubts his dedication to the cause he’s gonna use this precise moment as proof for his selfless ways.

“Listen, gorgeous,” he grabs Remus’s wrists, pinning them behind his back and kissing the corner of his mouth gingerly. “I can’t screw this thing up, all right? You can stay here and I’ll tell you when the coast is clear.”

Remus still looks so infuriatingly smug and Sirius hates how much he adores the look on him. “How kinky.” he intones. “What? You want me to be waiting here naked until you’re finished fucking the girl upstairs.”

Sirius makes a choked noise deep in his throat, hates how much he adores the image of Remus lounging here, playing with himself— just waiting for Sirius to come and finish him off. 

Merlin, what a picture.

He wills down the tightness in his pants as best as he can. Doesn’t want the others to think he’s got some sort of strange fetish for trash. “’s not a bird waiting upstairs for me.”

“Bloke then?” Remus asks, thrusting down, and making Sirius positively moan.

“’s not like that, I swear. I just can’t have any company till its over. I swear if you could be upstairs I’d do it, but—“

“It’s top secret.” Remus finishes, giggling in the most wondrous of ways.

“Please don’t be mad.”

“I’ll try and tempt down my rage.” Remus retorts, eyes bright with humor as he leans forwards and kisses Sirius open mouthed, and it’s another fifteen minutes before Sirius is presentable enough to go upstairs.

Like he expected, most of the other Order members have already arrived, including the prewetts with Dearborn, and Frank and Alice who are chatting amiably with Moody and Lily. He has to do a double take to find James and Dumbledore towards the fireplace and pads towards them.

“Ah, Mr Black.” Dumbledore greets, cornflower eyes glittering in that strange way of his. “I wished to thank you once more for volunteering your home for our consultation tonight.” 

“Course,” Sirius shrugs, feeling a semblance of regret over not getting to drag Remus upstairs to have his wicked way with him instead, but quickly staves off the thought less Dumbledore reads his mind right then. Instead he just smiles as pleasantly as he can muster and shakes his mentor’s outstretched hand. “Do you think it’ll last long?”

James glares at him disapprovingly but Dumbledore only laughs in that all knowing way that he always conducts himself within. “Hopefully not, but we do have important reconnaissance coming in from our Werewolf liaison that I hope to prove as invaluable as I suspect.”

Sirius’s brows crane upwards, and so do James’s. 

“Erm, werewolves sir?” James asks meekly, both of them being born into pureblooded families and off stories of how vicious and terrifying those particular dark creatures are— Masquerading as humans for twenty eight days a month before they’re driven to madness on that singular night.

“Ah yes, a sadly repressed people. But I do find our dear lad very charming even through all the difficulties he’s endured in his young life. A real inspiration.” He turns his head right then and smiles with an actually genuine mirth about him. “And here he is, our dear Mr Lupin.”

Sirius and James pivot to the doorway at the exact same time, and Sirius feels like he’s just taken a succor punch to the gut. 

“Remus?” And Sirius doesn’t even know why he spoke his name in such an inflection, because yes. Yes of course that’s Remus with his artfully disheveled curls and wide eyed gaze and nose that turns up just slightly at the end.

“‘lo Sirius,” he says back, winking before Dumbledore saddles up besides him and calls for the meeting to begin.

And fuck, Sirius is in real trouble with this one. He’s sure of it.

**Author's Note:**

> ISTG this was meant to be 2k!!! 
> 
> Thank you so SO endlessly for reading!!
> 
> It would mean ALL the moons and ALL the stars to me if you left a comment below letting me know what you thought<3
> 
> I post shorter one shots and Head canons on my [Tumblr](http://PrefectMoony.tumblr.com) if you wanna yell about these angels on there <3


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